R. Vaughan Williams - Fat Knight

First performed on 21

First performed on 21 March 1929, the four-act Sir John in Love was the most extensive of Vaughan Williams’s stage works from a productive decade in which his first opera Hugh the Drover and the pastoral episode The Shepherds of the Delectable Mountains were also premiered. To his own libretto, based on The Merry Wives of Windsor and adapted to include fourteen Elizabethan lyrics emphasising the love interest no less than the high spirits of Shakespeare’s only domestic comedy, he added a glorious stream of music, colourful and swift-moving and liberally embroidered with folk tunes. Of these, the familiar setting of Greensleeves soon acquired an independent life in the concert hall. Another piece drawing on the opera’s musical capital, the cantata In Windsor Forest, rapidly entered the choral repertoire following its publication in 1931. The existence of a two-piano arrangement of music from the opera among the manuscripts for Sir John in Love preserved in the British Library (Add MS 57284) suggests that Vaughan Williams had in mind a further satellite. The preparation of some of his most important works in this duo form, intended for performance before friends and colleagues at a late stage of the compositional process, is well-known. The Sixth Symphony, for example, was first heard in this way. Although the two-piano version might appear to be one of this number, there is evidence that it was also planned as the draft for a substantial orchestral suite based on the opera, the third and most ambitious elaboration of its materials. Textually, the key element is the annotations and suggestions to the manuscript in the composer’s hand, which is otherwise the work of a copyist, and already includes instrumental cues indicating strings or brass which might be useful for a pianist’s representation of the orchestra. Vaughan Williams’s markings, however, apply particularly to any passages that might be described as recitative, and indicate the orchestration he intended for them. For a two-piano arrangement intended simply for a trial run of the music, it would surely have been sufficient for any competent transcriber to indicate voices in these sections. If the inference therefore is that the composer intended this two-piano version to be orchestrated, nonetheless, identifying at what stage he contemplated the creation of an instrumental suite is problematical. Sir John in Love was begun in 1924, with the working title Fat Knight which also appears on the title page of the manuscript of the two-piano arrangement. Comparison with the opera itself reveals music in Fat Knight that was omitted from Sir John in Love as published; but whether these omissions were cut from the opera as a result of their first being heard in this duo form, or whether Vaughan Williams chose to retain the material in the suite, having excised it from the opera score, is an open question. What is clear, however, from the viewpoint of anyone attempting to create an orchestral version of Fat Knight, is the possibility of realising this from the score of the opera. preface Although the task would not simply be a matter of reproducing the relevant parts of the original into the new arrangement, much of the original could be used, especially from the strings, with the original vocal lines translated into orchestral solos. Such a pattern has been followed in this orchestration. In addition, missing passages from the published version have been rescored, and recitative sections laid out to reflect the composer’s indications. Where discrepancies exist between the tempo markings of Sir John in Love and Fat Knight for two pianos, the latter has been followed, as it has for its key structures. The instrumentation is exactly that of the opera, and the sequence of seven movements follows its chronology. Several of the movements segue into their successors, and the finale, based on Vaughan Williams’s tune for Ben Jonson’s See the chariot at hand, also follows the sixth movement without a break. for online perusal only I owe a huge debt of thanks to my music editor Emma Syrus for her unfailing hard work on preparing the full score and orchestral parts for the recording of Fat Knight. The result is a substantial piece for moderate-sized orchestra which allows the music from the opera to be heard entirely in orchestral terms. In view of the length of the piece I suggest possible cuts to reduce the playing time from 50 minutes or so to 30 minutes, as follows: Cut Movement III entirely In Movement IV, cut bars 32–98 inclusive Cut Movement V entirely In Movement VI, cut the repeat of bars 6–13 inclusive MARTIN YATES 2018 v

orchestration 2 Flutes (second doubling Piccolo) 2 Oboes (second doubling Cor Anglais) 2 Clarinets in B- and A 2 Bassoons 2 Horns in F 2 Trumpets in C Tenor Trombone Timpani Percussion (3 players: Piatti, Triangle, Gran Cassa, Side Drum, Suspended Cymbal, Glockenspiel, Xylophone, Bell, Rattles) Harp Strings for online perusal only Duration: c.50 minutes Fat Knight is recorded on Dutton Epoch [CDLX7328] with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, conducted by Martin Yates. It was generously supported by The Vaughan Williams Charitable Trust. The world premier of Fat Knight took place at the opening concert of the English Music Festival in Dorchester Abbey on 27 May 2016, given by the BBC Concert Orchestra, conducted by Martin Yates. It was broadcast on BBC Radio Three.